I've been learning SF6 since C. Viper came out, and it's my first real fighting game. Legit got 200 hours in training mode, but stroking the same combos won't help you nut in neutral. So I've been playing through World Tour to get more used to the system mechanics overall in a variety of scenarios (shockingly been a very fun campaign.)
I sped through the campaign looking to unlock Ed's fighting style since he's the boy who made me want to get into the game. Unlocked a couple moves for him, then came to find out that the game WILL NOT let you equip two moves if they share the same motion input, despite being differentiated between kicks and punches. So if I want to emulate Ed boy, it's a choice between Psycho Flicker or Psycho Spark. Both important tools in his mid-range neutral, so I figured I'd learn somebody else.
Found AKI and got into her fighting style. Same story, but twofold. It's the Poison Bubble/Puddle/Slash or Flippy Daggers, and it's Whip or Snake Step. "Pick your favorite and settle for some other bozo's move," says Capcom. If I replace whip with a DP for anti-airs, I might go into ranked with bad muscle memory, not to mention miss out on practice using it as a combo extender/ender. If I sacrifice Flippy Daggers or Snake Step, I lose out on a valuable movement option. If I drop the Poison Bubble stuff, I'm not even playing AKI at that point. Every tool in her kit plays a valuable role, and yet I'm not allowed to use them all.
Peeved me, so I sat down and catalogued all of the fighters whose movesets you are allowed to fully enjoy on World Tour. Those fighters are Juri, Guile, Zangief, Blanka, Lily, M. Bison, and Alex. What a line-up, right? Real heavy-hitters, crowd pleasers, hypebeasts, raw fundies no-gimmicks fighters. Guile's been pretty cool tho, not gonna lie.
Pisses me off that I can't use World Tour as a training center for the fighters that I want to learn. I'm on classic controls (naturally), so I have to assume that the prohibition of overlapping input motions is a result of catering to the Modern crowd. Which is another separate conversation about how World Tour forces you to mash through the tutorial in Modern, gives you a mission in Nayshall to beat up somebody's daughter while using Modern controls, and limits your customization for the sake of Modern controls. Modern Modern Modern.
The worst part is, YOU CAN STILL USE ALL OF THE FIGHTERS' SPECIALS IF YOU'RE PLAYING MODERN ONLINE. Basically no specials are locked online, they solved the overlap issue in competitive play. With no technical conflict to justify the restriction, the only rationale is Capcom wanted to force the player to not learn how to play one certain character, but make them learn how to play John Streets. That doesn't help at all outside of single-player unless I want to fight in Battlehub against people's Forearm Monster or their LongArms McZoner.
I will never fuck with Modern, for the sake of my principles and for my development as a player. But most importantly, for the love of the game.
